Road trip back in time on the Kaskaskia Cahokia Trail

A road sign along state Route 155 near Fort de Chartres notes that the highway is also designated as part of the Kaskaskia-Cahokia Trail, the Great River Road and the Lincoln Heritage Trail.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

Fleur-de-lis representing French saints decorate the altar of Immaculate Conception Church in Kaskaskia. While the red brick building has been rebuilt, the original altar was created in the early 1700s.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

Dressed in the period costume of an 18th-century French marine, Darrell Duensing leads children on a tour of Fort de Chartres.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

In Cahokia, visitors can tour the 1799 log church at Holy Family Church, billed as the oldest, continually operating Catholic parish in the U.S.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

A historic marker sits outside the Kaskaskia Bell State Memorial. Inside, visitors can see a large bell given to Kaskaskia, then a French colonial town, by the king of France in the mid-18th century.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

In Kaskaskia, local historian Emily Lyons explains how a huge bell cast in France got to be nicknamed “Liberty Bell of the West.”   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

Have some tea and a meal at Vici’s Front Porch and Tea Garden in Maeystown. Next door, the village’s historic mill houses a museum.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

Built in French-Creole style, the Pierre Menard Home, a state historic site in Ellis Grove, was home to Illinois’ first lieutenant governor.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

Whiskey is aged in barrels at Stumpy’s Spirits, a distillery just off the Great River Road in Columbia.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

The historic Immaculate Conception Church towers over the village of Kaskaskia. Behind it and the rectory, the smaller building with a white steeple is home to a large bell cast in French and shipped to Kaskaskia in the mid-1700s.   ( Alan Piel/Flyin High Photography )

With a tugboat and barges not far upriver, a car ferry crosses the Mighty Mississippi between Ste. Genevieve, Mo., and Modoc, Ill.   ( Alan Piel/Flyin High Photography )

The newest product from Stumpy’s Spirits is its Eighth gin, whose name is a nod to owner Adam Stumpf being the eighth generation of Stumpfs on the family farm.   ( Jay Jones/for the Chicago Tribune )

The powder magazine, center left, is the only original building still standing at Fort de Chartres. The rest of the fort crumbled over the decades and was rebuilt in the mid 1900s.   ( Alan Piel/Flyin High Photography )